![]() Yours will be different, but here’s mine: It’s how we must think about everything we do. Essentially it’s my personalization of our service core values. I highly recommend you develop a leadership philosophy, whether you lead a team of two or a global enterprise of thousands. Your leadership philosophy shapes you and your team. Choose sleep over social media, texting, and gaming. Not only does sleep enable learning, it also helps our mood, improves our ability to handle whatever life throws at us, and helps us prevent disease. ![]() You need seven and a half to nine hours of sleep a night, even more for teenagers, to optimize neurological functions in the brain associated with learning. To be most effective in meeting our obligations, we must practice the self-discipline to make positive choices optimizing Nutrition, Exercise, Relationships, and Sleep. Because of our Oath of Service, our actions must be guided by the following priorities the nation, our service, our unit, and mission. A strong web is not built with one strand, it’s built with an interlocking set of strands.ĭiscipline. With the pressure on you to perform well every day, getting likes on Instagram or a few texts will not be enough. You may struggle in class, a loved one may be sick or die, breakups happen, disagreements happen, and old friendships end. ![]() Make no mistake, you will have a difficult time at some point in training, because life happens. When you have a tough time, they will be there for you and you’ll be there when they have trouble. Invest time in getting to know your classmates, the people in your flight, people down the hall in the dorm, the soldier at the bus stop, or the Airman you’re often next to in formation because you’re the same height. You must build relationships with the people around you. A strong web of relationships with the people around you will optimize your effectiveness and resilience. Plus, exercise is a perfect way to take a break from studying. From a mental health and resiliency standpoint, exercise is powerful for fighting depression and anxiety. You need 30 minutes minimum of aerobic exercise three times per week to optimize your neurological effectiveness as a learner. Did I mention vegetables and staying hydrated?Įxercise. Although you may get to see the dentist for cavities or the medics because you pass out in formation during one of my long-winded speeches, your plan of living on three energy drinks a day is not going to help you learn Mandarin. However, you need to reduce sugars, increase complex carbohydrates, and stay hydrated. Particularly for those living on their own for the first time, the dining facility can be fraught with junk food peril. To optimize brain function, learners, and we’re all learners, must stay hydrated and eat healthy foods. We need to arm them to make choices, which optimize their capability as learners, increase their resiliency and enhance their overall effectiveness.Īs part of our campaign to improve performance of our Airmen, we have started sharing with Airmen that “if you follow NERDS, you will be successful.” Informed by Doyle and Zakrajsek’s The New Science of Learning, the fundamentals of resiliency, and the need for disciplined conduct to achieve goals, we offer the NERDS acronym: Nutrition, Exercise, Relationships, Discipline, Sleep. These are just a few indicators, along with the number of mental health crises our Airmen are experiencing, we need to step up our game as leaders to develop our people. Typically, only 30% to 40% of the Airmen say they got eight hours of sleep. I take an informal poll every two weeks when I speak to Airmen at in-processing to find out how many of them got eight hours of sleep or more the night before. If you pay attention, you can often see three service members sitting on a bus stop bench, looking at their smart phones, and not talking to each other. Your leadership philosophy shapes you and your team and our purpose matters.Īt the Presidio of Monterey, home of the 517th TRG and DLIFLC, most of our 3,000 students from all four service branches use buses to get around the Army post. The previous Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, emphasized the importance of these service members in the 2018 National Defense Strategy stating, “The creativity and talent of the American warfighter is our greatest enduring strength and one we do not take for granted.” Our obligation as leaders of these warfighters is best captured in a single phrase, “to whom much is given, much is expected.”Īs I reflect on the past two years, I offer three things for your consideration as good stewards, learners, and leaders: NERDS are awesome. For the past two years as commander of the 517th Training Group and Assistant Commandant of Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, America has entrusted thousands of its sons and daughters to my care.
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